


fellow late bloomers, who blossomed apart

by seancodyhockey



Category: Brunch (podcast), Real Person Fiction
Genre: DJ Bean's gay panic, Fluff and Angst, M/M, No Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 19:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13620357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seancodyhockey/pseuds/seancodyhockey
Summary: The thing about depression is that it eats away at you so slowly sometimes that you don't know you're in a bad place until you've been there for awhile.It's not all that different from falling in love with your mostly straight best friend.DJ feeling both at once is a particular kind of hell.





	fellow late bloomers, who blossomed apart

**Author's Note:**

> i've been binging brunch over several months, so this is just based on bits and pieces of things i remembered from episodes. i would've loved for this to have been 5000 words and included actual quotes, but that's a lot of fuckin' work and tbh i'm not sure where this came from anyway.
> 
> depressed and gay? me, projecting onto dj bean? never.
> 
> also i didn't bother explaining a damn thing, so there's references to brunch and their real lives with no explanation, sorry, that's just how it is. this is pretending sunday skate never happened and the jokes about them not being friends at first were real okay BYE.

 

 

 

“We should do an episode about hot guys,” Pete says, with a level of enthusiasm that suggests he thinks this is the best idea he's ever had. He's practically giddy, both knees bouncing under the table.

Ellen frowns into her drink. “You aren't basing an entire episode off me thinking Colin Jost is hot.”

“That is exactly what we're doing.” Pete looks to DJ for confirmation, his eyes bright and a bit maniacal, a clear sign he's scheming.

It's hard to deny Pete when he's like this. It's only recently that they've started spending time together on purpose, but even tonight, with the buffer of Ellen between them, DJ is drawn to Pete. His joy is infectious and joy is something in short supply in the Bean household.

DJ feels good when he's around Pete and that makes him want to be around Pete more often.

“Fuck Colin Jost and his weatherman haircut,” DJ says. He's sitting on his hands, a trick he'd learned in grade school to keep his body from giving too much away. For someone who talks with his hands as much as he does, podcasting may have been the wrong medium.

God, if the listeners saw what his hands said about Pete, they'd have a field day. They've already gotten weird about the two of them.

He pulls a hand from between himself and his seat to take a pull from his beer.

“Would it be weird for you guys to talk about hot guys?” Ellen asks. “Not a dig at your masculinity or anything, but have you like, established yourselves as that kind of podcast?”

“We've established ourselves as those kind of people, I think,” says Pete.

DJ chokes on his beer. _The kind of people who are attracted to men?_

“Straight dudes are the only authority on which dudes are actually hot. Not being attracted to guys makes it easier to be objective.”

“Yeah,” DJ adds. He puts his hands back under his legs.

 

**

 

Recording gets easier the more they do it. They're just hanging out, shooting the shit. In front of a live mic, but still. DJ learns to relax.

“We don't like...hang out outside of the podcast,” Pete says, and he's laughing while he says it, his upper lip all but disappearing when his mouth takes up half of his face.

DJ finds himself agreeing, verbally, and he knows he's talking, joking about how they aren't real friends in real life, but it's as if his brain splits in half and the part that's leaning into the mic is running on autopilot while the other is questioning why it is that they don't see more of each other.

“We aren't friends,” he jokes, and that's not entirely true, but it bothers him in a small way that he can't name. They're friends, sure. More than acquaintances, anyway, and they like enough of the same things that they can start a podcast together.

They don't see each other every day and more than half of their text thread right now is about Brunch, but truth be told, the podcast feels big. Bigger than both of them, if DJ allows himself a rare five seconds of being hopeful. Certainly bigger than their budding friendship.

It didn't always feel big. It wasn't until a few episodes in, after a night at a bar where he announced to the table that the only way to make that night better would be to involve Pete Blackburn. By the time Pete showed up, DJ was misty-eyed tipsy and had to remind himself that he wasn't casual enough to fall square into Pete's lap – a joke, of course – but he nearly did it, anyway.

Pete wasted no time catching up to him and by the time they left, at a respectable 11:54 pm because DJ wasn't in college anymore and Pete said he's a grandpa at heart, they were partially holding each other up, their shoulders soldered together until they took separate Ubers home.

There was a point in their lives, more recently than not, when they weren't friends.

But right now, Pete is smiling at him from across the table and DJ is certain that time has passed.

 

**

 

DJ looks over the audio file saving on his monitor. “Do you think that Kinsey scale stuff is gonna go over well?”

“Oh, for sure,” Pete answers. “After Hot Dudes and Weathermen, we're pretty well carved out as the gay-but-not-gay podcast.”

“Maybe a little gay,” DJ says, looking away from his screen for a second.

Pete is leaning back in his computer chair, stretching his arms over his head. His shirt rides up, just over the band of his sweats, and there's an exposed cut of skin that DJ makes a point to not look directly at.

“Well, yeah,” Pete says. “Everyone's a little gay.”

Pete Blackburn is cute, but there's no way he's more gay than his ability to find other dudes aesthetically pleasing. DJ knows this and keeps it to himself.

 

**

 

Pete's laughing again.

“Listeners want us to start dating,” he says. “But we already have a codependent relationship.”

He was right. The Kinsey Scale stuff went over great. So great that people start making jokes about he and Pete as a couple. As if DJ wasn't insecure enough in their friendship.

For a second, DJ forgets the mic is on. “It's to the point,” he starts, before realizing that he can't say too much here. He could always cut it out of the final version, if need be, but things are still too new and fresh and the last thing he wants to do is scare Pete away. “When something happens in pop culture, I'm like 'Wow, I can't wait to talk about this with Pete on the podcast.'”

They still don't talk as much outside of the podcast, but it's getting there. When he's being honest with himself, which happens infrequently, he'll admit he thinks about more than talking to Pete on the pod. He thinks about texting him good morning, thinks about texting him every time he gets a push notification for Pete's tweets, thinks about him through every episode of _The Walking Dead_ and wishes he were there.

 _Dating_ , he thinks. That seems a little extreme.

But he wakes up the next morning to a text from Pete.

**12:41 am I think that episode was onto something good**

 

**

 

“Has anyone ever accused you of defending Ross because you kind of look like him?” Pete picks at his cuticles. DJ swats at his hands to make him stop.

“Oh, fuck off.”

“I mean, you're objectively more attractive,” Pete says matter-of-factually, and DJ's cheeks start to burn. “But there's definite similarities, is all I'm saying.”

“If I'm Ross, you're Rachel.”

DJ's never seen Pete look so offended. “On _what_ basis?”

“Small, cute.” DJ grins. “Dumb.”

“Oh, fuck you right back, dude. If anything, I'm Chandler.”

“If you're Chandler, I'm Monica.”

“I mean, she is Ross's sister, so like, looks-wise, it isn't much of a stretch." He thinks it over for a second. "And she's got that endearing-but-neurotic thing going on.”

Maybe that should sting. Coming from Pete, it doesn't.

“You do love my crazy.”

“Yeah.”

 

**

 

The thing about depression is that it eats away at you so slowly sometimes that you don't know you're in a bad place until you've been there for awhile.

It's not all that different from falling in love with your mostly straight best friend.

DJ feeling both at once is a particular kind of hell.

 

**

 

The thing is, they're proper friends now.

Maybe not best friends, because Jeff would do that kind of stand-offish pouting if DJ so much as suggested that Pete was his best friend, but at some point, they became a constant in the other's life. There's only so much two people can go through together and still be able to deny that they mean something to each other.

Too many times, they've been drunk together and too many times has DJ almost kissed Pete for them to not, at the very least, be friends.

For his whole life, DJ has struggled to open up. But then Pete walks in, this small guy who is filled to the brim with warmth, and suddenly, it's the easiest thing in the world. Talking to Pete is so unbelievably easy and that's why the podcast works. They love the same things, so when one finds something new to love, they bring the other down with him.

DJ doesn't know what that would mean if he loves Pete and he's too scared to find out.

 

**

 

“How does being depressed work?” It's Pete asking, so DJ can't take offense and knows better than to laugh in his face at his genuine curiosity. Leave it to Blackburn to ask the heavy stuff during commercial breaks. “Like how do you know if you're depressed and not just sad?”

“Sadness is passing. Depression is more complete, I guess. It's like...some days, I don't feel anything. And some days–” He swallows, acutely aware that Pete's arm is technically around him, over the top of the couch they're sharing. “I feel too much.”

Pete doesn't say anything and DJ can't do silence. Not when he's the subject of conversation.

“Most days, though, it's like...The easiest solution to everything is being dead.” Pete's arm tightens behind DJ's neck.

“Are there...more good days than bad?”

“Lately?”

Pete looks up at him and nods.

“Yeah, man. More good than bad.”

“Good.”

Pete pulls his arm away, squeezes the back of his neck for a second, and readjusts himself on the couch. The commercials are over.

_More good than bad._

 

**

 

 **I think I'm in love with Pete? Please advise** , DJ texts Jeff.

 **Quit fucking pining** , Jeff sends back.

“I'm not fucking pining,” DJ says aloud to no one in particular, because he's five minutes from crawling into bed alone in his apartment, and it's not like Jeff is there, or Pete is there, and jesus christ, is this what his life has come to now?

He doesn't send it in a reply text, though. Jeff knows him better than that.

 

**

 

DJ walks through the door at Pete's mom's house and toes out of his shoes as quickly as he can. He thinks if he doesn't move fast enough, he'll lose all of his resolve.

Pete doesn't even greet him anymore. “What do you think about taking taking a trip this summer?”

“I'm not straight.”

Pete closes his mouth.

The moment lasts too long. They're making eye contact and suddenly everything in DJ is on red alert. He's too tall next to Pete, too awkward to be having this conversation, and he's regretting everything, but especially regretting taking off his shoes because – no disrespect to Pete's mom wanting nice floors – he can't just leave and he knows if he reaches for his shoes now, he's going to fumble and make things worse.

“It would be easier to be dead right now,” he says and a second wave of panicked regret washes over him. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, holy _fuck_ , I–”

“ _Stop_.”

Pete is much closer than he was a few seconds ago and DJ still feels as though his height is making this whole thing worse somehow.

“Did you think I'd be upset?” Pete asks. “We've pretty much made an entire brand on dudes we want to fuck.”

“That's not...” DJ can't look at him for this part, so he doesn't, but he knows there's not enough space between them for this to not be awful. “What if you're one of them?”

“You...you want to fuck me?”

“You know, it sounds absolutely terrible actually hearing it aloud, so–”

“Dude.”

He turns back to face Pete and he's _right there_ in front of him. He reaches out gingerly, working DJ's jacket between his thumb and forefinger.

“You're on my list, too.”

DJ's brain goes shockingly white for a full three seconds.

“Yeah?” he finally says.

“Yeah,” Pete laughs.

He's not quite sure what to do, but Pete makes that decision for him, reaching up and wrapping his palm around the back of DJ's neck and pulling him in until their lips touch. Every nerve in DJ's body is firing off at once and he barely has time to register when Pete loses his balance and they both tumble to the floor. Pete's laughing and he presses kisses into DJ's arm, his shoulder, his chest. Neither of them make a move to get up and DJ's is only slightly embarrassed that he's out of breath.

“Think we can get Gay Brunch to give us their name?” Pete asks him.

DJ looks at him, leans in, and kisses him. “I think we've earned it.”

 


End file.
